


Fairly Structured Torture

by ouro_boros



Category: The Wrong Mans (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Blanket Permission, F/M, Kink Exploration, M/M, Marat Malankovic is mentioned, Podfic Welcome, Self-Discovery, as are many people who put sam in compromising positions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:34:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26824486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ouro_boros/pseuds/ouro_boros
Summary: A while after the season 2 finale, Sam is still thinking about Marat. He's thinking about a lot of things. Luckily for him, his best friend is disturbingly good at giving advice.
Relationships: Sam Pinkett & Phil Bourne, Sam Pinkett/Lizzie Green
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Fairly Structured Torture

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a reference to that bit of Taskmaster S7 where Rhod Gilbert stripped Alex Horne, tied him to a chair, and force fed him coffee. What can I say, it had that accidentally-kinky energy.
> 
> Alternate title: Powerful Homoeroticism. I Really Enjoyed It.

“Phil?”

“Yeah?”

“Is it weird that I. Uh.”

“Well? Come out with it!”

Sam fiddled with his beer can, not entirely certain why he’d decided to bring this up now, let alone at all. But then, sitting in silence in his and Phil’s apartment could be boring. It had definitely led to Sam thinking about things he… probably shouldn’t have been.

“Look, you can’t tell this to anyone—”

“Who would I tell?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Rosa?”

“Tch, well that’s Rosa, anything you can say to me you can say to Rosa.”

Sam glowered at him until he gave in.

“Fine, fine, I won’t tell Rosa. Come on, now I’m curious!”

Sam further considered his beer can. He almost took a drink, but instead he said, “I keep thinking about Marat.”

Phil scrunched up his eyebrows.

“Yeah, sure you do. He was shot right in front of us, Sam. Twice, sort of! That’s not exactly something you forget.”

“Not—Not him getting shot. I keep thinking about, y’know,” he ran his thumb over the condensation, breathed in deep, and brought the can to his mouth, “how he kissed me.” He drank. Deeply.

Once he was done with the can, he pushed it away to join the others littered on the coffee table and glanced at Phil, whose face had not shifted an inch.

“Yeah?” Phil finally added.

Sam, a bit put off, responded, “Yeah.”

Phil paused again.

“Well go on.”

Sam huffed and turned on the couch to face him.

“It was weird,” Sam said.

“Bad weird or good weird?”

“You just feel obligated to say that because it’s in the movies.”

“Don’t knock the movies, Sam. Bad weird or good weird?”

“Bad weird! Okay?”

“Okay!”

Phil leaned back against the sofa, settling comfortably into cushions that couldn’t forget him if they tried.

“I just—well, why would you think it’s weird that you’re still thinking about it, if it was bad weird when it happened?”

“Look.”

Sam clasped his hands together, squeezing them to relieve pressure.

“It’s not just that… he kissed me.”

“Yeah?”

“Before that, you… did see that I was, uh, almost naked.”

“When you were lying on the couch with Marat over you, you mean?”

“Y—well, not over me, that implies…”

“What, that he was about to have sex with you?”

He wasn’t wrong.

Phil groaned. “I already knew he thought you were his prostitute, why are you—”

“I was. High. At the time.”

“Yeah?”

“And I don’t know that—had you not come in, I don’t know that I would have… not. Have.”

Phil took a moment to absorb this new information, but when he did, he realized quick that this was a doozy.

“You mean, you would have had sex with him?”

“I was high!” Sam doubled down. “I had never—and it was all very overwhelming, alright?”

“Those are reasons not to have sex with someone!”

Sam threw himself into the sofa’s back cushion, the heels of his hands ground into his eyes, regretting deeply bringing this up.

“Sam,” Phil said, calmer but by no means calm, “you do realize that, that couch you were laying on, there were—”

“Other people on it, trust me, I know, we were in a room full of people.”

“Okay, okay, that’s fine.”

“’That’s fine?’ What do you mean ‘that’s fine?’”

“I mean,” Phil sputtered for a few seconds, hands outstretched, nothing to offer, “everyone has a thing, y’know.”

Sam’s blank but imploring stare said that he did not.

“Every guy’s thought about what it would be like with another guy,” Phil explained.

“Oh, have they, Phil?”

“Sure! I have.”

Phil either didn’t notice or chose to ignore Sam’s over exaggerated eye roll at the both overly-intimate and not-really-surprising assurance.

“And as far as kinks go,” Phil continued, as aware of himself as he ever was, “public sex is not the worst you could do. I mean, situation depending.”

“Sure.”

“I’m not about to advise you to go, I dunno, have sex in a grocery store or something.”

“Mm. Yeah. This really isn’t what I was hoping to get out of this conversation?”

“Oh? Go on then.”

Sam stood, grabbed another can from the mini-fridge, and raised it pointedly towards Phil, who shook his head, raising in response his still mostly full beverage. Sam closed the door harder than necessary, not that it made much noise. He opened the can and walked around behind the sofa, leaning on its back. This had the desired effect of Phil listening to him but not looking at him. The conversation was already uncomfortable. Unfortunately, at that point, it would have been only more uncomfortable to end it.

“Okay. Afterwards.”

“Like, how afterwards?”

“In prison, in Texas.”

“So. Pretty afterwards.”

“Yeah, Phil. Pretty afterwards.”

“What about it?”

“Well, first, there was that guy, licking his lips at me.”

“That was the guy that tried to kill us later on, right?”

“Right.”

“Wonder what that licking his lips thing was about.”

“An intimidation tactic? I don’t know!”

“And the licking, that do it for you?”

“No, it was just…”

He trailed off, unable to put a name to the churning feeling the incident had caused in his stomach.

“Bad weird?” Phil suggested.

“Bad weird.”

“And then?”

“Then… there was the Nazi guy.”

“Aah, Sam, I don’t know how I feel about you wanting to have sex with a Nazi…”

Flabbergasted, Sam reared back from the sofa, making Phil twist around to look at him.

“Who said anything about wanting to have sex with him? Or anyone?”

“You did start with the bit about how you were going to have sex with Marat.”

“I—That wasn’t— Listen, if you’re not going to—”

“Alright, alright. Breathe, Sam. Take a drink.”

Sam obeyed. As good as Phil was at riling him up, he was just as good at calming him down.

“You good?”

Sam nodded. He walked back around and sat again on the sofa.

“Alright. Now continue. The Nazi guy?”

“Are you sure you want to hear this? ‘Cause this one’s… not great.”

“Worse than that time you very nearly had sex in the middle of a party with a man who constantly called you ‘beautiful boy’ and later kissed you?”

“Yes.”

“Fair enough but go on.”

Sam breathed tightly through his mouth. The fact that he had gotten so deep into this impromptu confessional was sobering him in an unpleasant manner. But it wasn’t like it would help any to stop now.

“So, he pinned me down to that table.”

“Oh yeah, very sexual, that. But like, in a repressed sort of way.”

“I seriously doubt anything about that man was repressed.”

“Aren’t Nazis homophobic?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Did you ever see Cabaret? And I mean the actual musical, not that Liza Minnelli shit. It was a good movie, but it cut out some of the best parts. Schneider was hardly in it at all, and they replaced her and Schultz’s storyline with some young couple, not to mention how much they fucked with Sally’s—”

“Phil. I don’t watch musicals.”

“Why not? Nothing wrong with them.”

“They’re… annoying, I don’t know!”

“Are you sure it isn’t that they make you confront emotions you prefer to believe you don’t have? Because I have seen that before.”

“I’m plenty in touch with my emotions, as I’m sure the fact that we’re having this conversation can prove, speaking of which?”

“Oh, right, so he’s pinning you down, and…”

Sam didn’t respond, his eyes wide and stuck on the floor. Phil furrowed his brow in thought until—

“The ping pong ball,” Phil breathed. “The ping pong ball?”

Sam nodded.

“The ping pong ball.” His head fell against the couch cushion. “Wow. I really didn’t expect this to go so far. The ping pong ball. I know you and Lizzie went out for a long time, did you ever… dip your toe in? Use a ball gag? For instance?”

Sam laughed, a little hysterical, his eyes wide as a deer in headlights.

“What? No! No, never!”

“Is that, no offense I mean, but is that one of the reasons you two didn’t work out?”

“We did! We are!”

“Well, not all the time at least, give me that.”

“Our temporarily breaking up was unrelated to any—” he very nearly said the term ‘ball gag’ and quickly closed his mouth. Phil gave him a moment to come up with a different sentence. “It was entirely unrelated to whatever the hell it is we’re talking about right now.”

“What we’re talking about, Sam,” Phil said in that deadly serious voice he used in the least appropriate of situations, “is you discovering things about yourself when you were forced into unfamiliar situations. I think we both changed after all that, and we certainly know ourselves better. We know what we can survive. We know the situations we can get ourselves out of. And you’re figuring out your kinks. Now can we please get back on topic so you can tell me what you felt when that Nazi guy shoved a ping pong ball in your mouth.” 

Sam blustered for a minute, a little put off by the force with which Phil was supporting him. Eventually he arrived at, “It—it was that same feeling, bad weird.”

“Sam,” said Phil, clasping his hands like he was nailing a job interview, “out of curiosity, what does ‘bad weird’ actually feel like?”

“I—well, I am using the term because I don’t know what it is—”

“No, I mean, you don’t have to define it, just what does it feel like?”

Sam still looked confused.

“Okay, so,” Phil began to explain, crossing his legs on the cushion so he could face Sam completely, “you know how different people carry stress in different places in their body? Like, my mum always has this whirlpool feeling in her stomach, for me it’s kind of a—a pulsing in my head, and you get that back pain.”

“How do you know about that?”

Phil chuckled and tilted his head.

“Sam. C’mon. It’s easy to see when you’re looking for it, and you know I was looking for it.”

Sam groaned, running his free hand over his face.

“I hate how unsurprised I am by that.”

“So, where is ‘bad weird’ in your body?”

Sam paused to consider. He reimagined these situations and tried his best to focus more on his body than the mental ramifications.

“Um, partly, it’s in my stomach.”

“Stomach, alright, what sort of feeling in your stomach?”

“Like…” a sort of churning feeling, but more specifically, “like someone’s mixing a really thick bowl of macaroni and cheese in it.”

“Macaroni and cheese?” Phil repeated.

“Yeah.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“Well, just seems a comforting image for a negative feeling.”

Sam started to protest, but Phil stopped him with a raised index finger.

“Ehp ehp ehp! What else?”

He furrowed his brow and continued thinking.

“There’s also this feeling of… calcium building up behind my knee caps?”

This stumped Phil. After a moment of silence, he asked, “Is there calcium building up behind your knee caps?”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s hereditary, but I have an aunt who had to get some scraped off in surgery, so, yeah, probably.”

“Could that be why you’re feeling that?”

Sam considered.

“No,” he decided. “That mental image has just always really stuck with me."

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Yes,” Sam groaned. “You’re going to love this one,” he said, stalling.

Of course, this only made Phil excited. He was practically bouncing in his seat.

“There’s a… feeling, in my… thighs. Like after you’ve been running or jogging or whatever for a long time and then stop without stretching or anything, and you get that twitchy, popping feeling.”

Phil stopped bouncing, floored. He loved this one. He wasn’t sure when it had become his mission to prove that Sam’s “bad weird” was less “bad” and more “emotionally and sexually frustrating,” but the mission was turning out to be a lot easier than expected.

“Okay. Yeah, okay, thigh… popping. And. Macaroni and cheese stirring.”

“And calcium build-up.”

“And calcium build-up. Sure. Sure.” Phil breathed sharply out through his mouth. “I mean, obviously you know what those sound like, right? Less the calcium thing, though I guess that could be an offshoot of the whole ‘weak knees’ cliche.”

“Yeah, Phil, I know what they sound like, I’m more interested in what they are.”

“Couldn’t they just be what they sound like? As I say, the best solution to a problem is usually—”

“’The easiest one.’ I know where you got that from, Phil, you can’t pretend you came up with it yourself.”

Phil leaned in dramatically, closer than necessary. “Exactly, that’s why I love you, and that’s why I don’t think you should just be satisfied with ‘bad weird.’”

“You said it first.”

“Yeah, as a stepping stone. I didn’t think you’d really be this deep in denial.”

“Denial? Wha—why—denial?”

“Actually, now that I’m thinking of it, didn’t Marat mention something about you ‘holding him in your—'”

“Okay.”

Sam stood, beer can tight in his grasp forgotten, and took a few quick strides away.

“This has gotten way out of—”

“Hand?”

Sam glared at him before continuing, “I just wanted to vent, and now you're pushing this, this agenda.”

Phil sighed.

“I'm sorry, Sam. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, I get how I could have approached this better, I'll try not to make the same mistake in the future and oh my God please don't use the word agenda in this context ever again! You get why that was weird, right? You get that? Okay.

"Sam," said Phil in his take-control-of-the-room voice, "you are attracted to men. I'm stating that as fact because, frankly, it's obvious, it's been obvious, and we have more important things to spend time on."

Sam opened his mouth to argue, but… what had he actually been hoping to get from this conversation? He knew better than anyone that Phil was an incorrigible problem-solver, so hadn't he expected Phil to try and solve this problem? Though he hated the concept for many reasons (not least of which being the Freudian overtones), maybe he had, on some subconscious level, confessed this to Phil because he knew he'd get a ridiculous and accurate analysis in return.

Or maybe he'd just really needed to get it off his chest and Phil was his best friend. One or the other.

"Fine," he answered. "I guess… yes, okay, you're right. More important things."

"Wait, so you are admitting that you're at least a little gay?"

"What? No! I mean—no! I'm not at all gay, none of this means I'm suddenly not attracted to women!"

"Calm yourself, Sam, 'gay' can be an umbrella term."

"Since when are you an expert?"

"Since you started asking me for advice!"

"I never—ughhh fine! If it'll make you move on, I'll 'admit' that I'm—"

Despite his resoluteness going into the sentence, Sam had a few knots in his throat to hack through before he could finish.

"That I'm attracted to men. There. It's done."

"Ha! Can't believe you actually said it. I am good."

Sam glared.

"Moving on?" he prompted.

"To what?"

"'More important things?'"

"Oh! Oh, right, yeah. Okay so… kinks. You're definitely into the adrenaline rush thing. Not saying you're a junkie," Phil said, pre-empting whatever argument Sam had bubbling up, "and it's not at all unusual! Most people like some spice! Your spice in particular just so happens to come in the form of genuine mortal danger. So, not great, but certainly not unpredictable. Especially for someone in our line of work.”

Sam considered contending that bit about “our line of work,” but restrained himself.

Phil continued, "The public sex thing might be an off-shoot of that. You might also have just been desperate and willing to look past the public aspect, so it's possible your thing with Marat was a unique occurrence. Although, the ping pong ball incident was rather public too… You'll have to explore that more. Speaking of," he pointed to Sam, "ball gag. If you don't get one for yourself, I will."

"Isn't that kind of jumping in the deep end? I don't even know if it was necessarily the ball aspect that I enjoyed, and I've never been gagged with anything before—not in a sexual context anyway—and—"

"Ok, try other gags then. But I'll bet you like the weight on your tongue, and there are non-deep end ball gags. I'd be more worried about talking to Lizzie about it, if I were you."

Sam looked like he might throw up.

“Oh God,” he groaned, “how the hell am I going to tell Lizzie?”

“About your kinks, or your latent homosexual desires? Because if you mean the latter, I’ve got to tell you, Sam, I think she probably knows.”

“Wait, what? About the—what?”

“I mean, I don’t want to stereotype or anything, but you do give off some serious vibes.”

“I don’t give off vibes!”

“Sam, I barely even have a gay-dar and you set it off. Your repressed attraction to men was so strong that you gave me a gay-dar. Yeah, I’d definitely focus on the kink thing.”

Sam put his head in his hands.

"And how exactly am I meant to do that?" he asked, slightly muffled.

"Eh, it’ll be awkward to bring up, but she’ll come around. Maybe you could go to a BDSM dungeon together. Ooh, is there one around here? I haven’t heard of one, but I’ve never really looked—not my thing, you know.”

This granted him a look of horror from Sam.

“‘Not your thing?’ Then why exactly are you acting like you know more about all of this than I do?”

“Well, for one, because you clearly don’t know anything, so I know more than you by default, but mainly because personal interest doesn’t necessarily correlate to knowledge. You enjoy the kinky shit in your life, and I occasionally enjoy some fictional kinky shit. Anyway, I don’t claim to know everything, Sam. You’ll have to look up a lot of stuff when this conversation is over.”

"Yeah, when will that be, by the way?"

Phil shrugged and answered, "Whenever it comes to a natural conclusion."

"Okay."

Sam stood and drew a line in a broad gesture with his arms.

"This is the natural conclusion," said Sam. "I'm going to sleep."

"Gotta masturbate this one out, eh? I can give you a couple resources if—"

"No thank you, Phil!" Sam called out as he left.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was partially inspired by my favorite IT Crowd fic. I would put it in the "inspired by" thing but... Then the author would be notified, and uh. I don't want earlylight to know about this. So! [Here's the link, highly recommended: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9920399](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9920399)
> 
> [You can find me at oury-boros on Tumblr!](https://oury-boros.tumblr.com/)


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